The deep rasp of his voice made Toby jerk against her shoulder. As she soothed her brother with the stroke of her hand, the light touch of Anton’s fingertips came to rest low on her back as if in reassurance, and the nerve endings there tingled in response.
She was glad he was here. At this precise moment while she was a mixed-up mess of conflicting feelings about this meeting; it was comforting to feel his presence like a protective wall at her back. When those fingertips urged her forward, she moved on legs that felt as if they had turned to sponge.
Theo Kanellis watched her every step. He took in her hair flowing free around her shoulders, the simple cut of her apricot dress and the long, slender length of her legs. When she pulled to a halt four feet away from him, he flicked his gaze up to take in the electric-blue steadiness of her gaze. They continued to stare at each other for what felt like minutes, facing off like wary adversaries waiting to see which one of them broke first.
It would not be her, Zoe told herself. She was determined to keep silent until he said something worthy of an answer.
It came. ‘You look like your mother,’ he growled, his mouth turning downwards as if in contempt.
‘Thank you,’ Zoe replied smoothly.
‘And very English,’ he added like a prod in the chest.
‘I am very English,’ she confirmed with studied composure.
Curiously, he still had not looked at Toby. In fact the next person he turned his fierce gaze upon was Anton. ‘I suppose you think you’ve pulled off a great coup.’
‘Depends on the coup you are referring to,’ the man standing tall and steady as a rock behind her responded. ‘How are you, Theo?’
At last, someone had tried to inject some normal manners into the proceedings. Not that it was a hit with Theo Kanellis. ‘You can cut out that rubbish,’ he snapped, then lifted up the hand clenched around his walking stick. ‘Sit down over there, where I can see you,’ he instructed Zoe, waving the stick at one of two wing-backed chairs standing either side of the fireplace. ‘You,’ he said to Anton, ‘Can make yourself scarce.’
‘I will leave when your granddaughter indicates to me that she wants me to leave,’ Anton came back smooth as silk to her grandfather’s grating rasp.
It was like the clash of the Titans, thought Zoe, every one of her senses alert to the fact that she was in the presence of two very powerful male personalities here. Theo Kanellis continued to glare at Anton while he maintained his solid stance behind her with his fingers still in contact with her back.
Yet there was something about the older man’s demeanour—Zoe wasn’t sure what it was—that made her decide to break the pulsing deadlock between the two men. Moving over to the chair her grandfather had pointed at, she lowered herself down on its edge, which freed Anton from his protective stance without her needing to say anything.
Because she did not want him to go. It came as a small shock to realise how reliant she felt on his presence right now. What he did was to wait until Theo Kanellis had lowered himself into the other chair, then he walked across the room to stand by the window as if he was taking the middle path by staying in the room while withdrawing to the edges of the fray.
‘So, you had better let me have a look at him.’ Theo Kanellis fired his first look at Toby.
Experiencing a stab of over-protectiveness for her brother which made her want to hug him all the closer to her front, she forced down the impulse, lifted the baby off her shoulder and brought him to rest in the cradle of her arms, then twisted slightly on the chair so his grandfather could see his tiny sleeping face.
Tension plucked at the silence again while grandfather stared at grandson. Zoe couldn’t tell if he was impressed or unimpressed by what he saw, but the growl in his voice thickened slightly when he looked back at her and said, ‘At least he looks Greek.’
She had no argument with that observation. Her brother did look very Greek. ‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘Tobias …’ he growled next. ‘What kind of name is that for a Greek boy?’
‘It is the name my parents chose for Toby before they …’
Zoe let her voice trail to a muffled standstill when she realised what she had almost said. Lowering her eyes from the ones watching her so intently, she swallowed tautly and just hoped that the sudden pang of grief she’d suffered had not showed on her face.
But her grandfather had seen it. He shifted restlessly where he sat. ‘I am—sorry for your loss,’ he murmured uncomfortably. ‘It is unfortunate that we should meet for the first time under such—tragic circumstances.’
Unable to find a single thing to say in response to this offer of sympathy, from the man who had cut his own son out of his life twenty three years ago, all Zoe could do was nod.
Anton had told her that her grandfather had regrets about the past and she could feel those regrets pulsing in the space between them right now. Was it wrong of her to feel bitter about that? Because she did feel bitter, and angry on her father’s behalf; hurt for her mother who had lived those same twenty-three years knowing she was not an acceptable wife for this man’s son. And, yes, she was hurt on her own behalf that she too had not been worthy of his notice.
‘OK,’ growled that rasping voice. ‘I can see that you don’t want to talk about my son, so we will get down to business instead. Anton tells me you are prepared to marry him to help stop your inheritance from going down the drain with my stock.’
Zoe lifted her chin to look at him, ‘I have no interest in your money,’ she informed him.
‘So you are agreeing to throw your life away on this ruthless devil out of the kindness of your heart?’
‘No.’ She felt the heat of temper attempting to flood her cheeks at his assessment of what she was doing as mercenary. ‘I’m doing it for my brother and his future.’